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SAN DIEGO — With great power comes great responsibility. It's one of the lessons Peter Parker learns from his uncle and one that new Spider-Man Andrew Garfield and his director have taken to heart.

Garfield (The Social Network) and Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) have big shoes to fill from their predecessors Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi. And they know it.

"I loved Tobey's interpretation of the character. It's one of the things . . . that reminded me how much this character means to me . . . When I saw the first Spidey, I lost my mind," Garfield said Friday at a news conference at ComicCon, the annual pop culture convention in San Diego.

"I had the wonderful fortune of meeting him when we finished shooting . . . but he sent a wonderful e-mail when (my casting) was announced, basically giving me his blessing. And it meant the world to me because I respect him so much as an actor generally and especially what he did with the role I'm now assuming."

ComicCon fans' Spidey senses were tingling in overdrive as the cast spun their publicity web. The clear pop culture giant of this year's convention, The Amazing Spider-Man is slated for release in the summer of 2012 and promises a grittier, character-driven look at Spider-Man's years as a late teen.

"We all feel this incredible sense of responsibility," Webb said. "What better cinematic character is there than Spider-Man?"

Garfield, a longtime Spider-Man fan, called the role "a childhood dream," and "the most defining experience of my life."

"They gave me a really special thing to tell my grandkids," he said of the director and producers' decision to cast him. Garfield was even sporting the right colours. Dressed in a red sweater with thin stripes, the actor looked like Spider-Man dressed for casual Fridays.

The new Spider-Man will be full of changes. Even Spidey-love Mary Jane Watson is gone, and replaced by Emma Stone as Parker's first comic-book love Gwen Stacy. British actor Rhys Ifans will play Dr. Curt Connors, who is transformed accidentally into The Lizard, one of Spider-Man's archenemies.

"Spider-Man is part of our culture — he is a perennial character," Webb said. "He is constantly re-examined in the comics — I thought it was something we could really do cinematically . . . (Spider-Man) belongs on the big screen and there is so much fantastic material from the comic books (to explore)."

Garfield said he was a fan of all of Spider-Man's comic incarnations, but cited the Ultimate Spider-Man line of comics as a great source of research for the film.

"I loved the artwork in that, how lithe and skinny he was because I'm skinny, as you can see," Garfield said to laughter from his fellow cast members.

"I loved the idea of a skinny teenage kid beating the crap out of huge guy. That's always been a dream of mine that I've wanted to personally fulfil and what better way to do it?"

Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad said the previous team behind the series felt they had taken their story arc as far as it could go. Marvel made a conscious decision to start from a blank slate.

"There wasn't enough newness," Arad said. "There was no new story to tell. As we started to discussing this movie . . . we knew we needed to find stories that were not told before and we needed to find a director who had his own style and, through his style, the movie would totally feel different because directors tend to bring their own vision on the screen.

"The only thing that stayed the same . . . is the spirit of Peter Parker," Arad added. "What he's about and how he would behave in this day and age. How would a kid like him in high school react to things . . . We were able to convince Marc to take a shot at it, this is scary stuff . . . and we are very proud of what we have."

Webb said shooting the film in 3-D allowed them to bring fans into the experience of using Spider-Man's powers.

"Because we were shooting in 3-D, I wanted to shoot certain things very specifically for 3-D," he said. "There is an experiential component to 3-D that makes it really fantastic. We're experimenting with generating that point of view so you can feel what Peter Parker feels, you can feel what Spider-Man feels when he's jumping over a building and over the streets.

"Andrew had to pay the price for this, but we made a very conscious effort to ground stunts, and we had an incredible stunt team put together. (For example), we built this whole rig hundreds of feet long under Riverside Drive in Harlem and we swung a man through traffic down the street."

Despite the pending Marvel film The Avengers, which brings together big-screen heroes Thor, Captain America and Iron Man, Arad said Marvel has no plans for a Spidey crossover. The hero can spin a big enough web on his own.

"I think that obviously in the comics the team-ups and mix-ups keep publishing going for that many years, but I think Spider-Man has a huge universe of its own," Arad said. "So many villains, foes and friends . . . it's not something we're even thinking about because we have so much more to tell. That's why we made this movie."

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